


Blue Butterfly Effect and Mr. Three-Piece Suit

by BlackSpade741



Category: Escape Plan (2013), Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Inception AU, M/M, and a little bit of smut in the middle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-03-30 09:23:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3931576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackSpade741/pseuds/BlackSpade741
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reese is in a coma from injuries. He keeps dreaming the same dream, in which he is Warden Hobbes. He built a prison ship to contain all the high-risk prisoners. He cannot wake from the dream, and has to keep repeating it. Finch enters the dream to try to bring Reese out of the dream. In Reese's dream, Finch is a prisoner in the Tomb. He has to destroy the one thing that is most precious to Reese in order to destroy the dream...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [蓝蝴蝶效应和三件套先生](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/114961) by 黄村长. 



> Original author's notes:  
> 说明：1、盗梦空间梗，做了很多无比坑爹的二次设定，完全不科学。Arthur是来打酱油和发展剧情的。  
> 2、文的简介看起来虐身心，实际上是在监狱谈恋爱的节奏。文章一小部分虐，但有众多小甜饼和冷笑话，闪瞎眼和刷时髦值。  
> Translation:  
> Notes: 1. This fic uses the setting of Inception, with various changes in between that totally doesn't make sense. Arthur is just a passer by, and he helps to explain the setting and push the plot forward.  
> 2\. The summary may sound angsty, but in truth they are pretty much dating in the prison. There are some parts of the fic that is angst, but there's lots of fluff and bad jokes and epic dating and great fashion.
> 
> Translator's Notes:  
> Read this fic a while back and just had to translate it for the sake of the Western fandom. This is my first time translating a fic, so some of the sentences may sound mechanical. English is not my first language so please bear with me through this excruciating process of translating!  
> The original fic was posted on Lofter in three parts, but since any one of the parts may amount to roughly 20k words, I took the liberty of separating the fic into smaller chapters. This first chapter is mostly exposition, and we'll head into the actual plot in the next chapter!

Reese was still lying there. Eyes closed, not making a sound, body mapped with all sorts of tubes. Breathing seemed to be the only privilege he still had. He'd been lying there for two weeks already; doctors said he would continue to do so, maybe forever.

No one had a clue about the things that could come.

Doctors never know what kind of people they were treating, nor do they know how their medications work. They definitely won't know if someone would lie there forever, either. 

The tubes kept Reese alive. The colourful tubes of different sizes on his body made him look like a motherboard with all the wires plugged in, Finch had thought once. He couldn't help but think of these seemingly desperate metaphors while watching Reese laying still on the hospital bed. Like yesterday night when he thought Reese was like a motherboard without a battery. 

You could fix a circuit board, but you could not wake a person in comatose. You could delete a virus from a computer, but you could not chase out the fear and the darkness in one's heart. You could check a program's logs for errors, but you could not read thoughts that vanish as soon as they appear. You could breach an all-secure firewall, but you could not reach into a person's heart.  
Thus, after all, humans are not machines, and Finch couldn't do anything to help.

Unfortunately, the doctors couldn't either.

 

Over the past two weeks, Finch had gathered the best doctors in the world to treat Reese; he even tried to use mysterious Eastern treatments such as the Indian Ayurveda and the Chinese traditional medicine, but none of the doctors knew what to do.

They shook their heads helplessly while telling Finch that this man may never wake up again. Their faces looked the same as the faces of the people who found out that their iPhone screens had been cracked.

Dreadful images filled Finch's head. A funeral for Reese and his tombstone—vibrant flowers, black umbrella, black suit, black stormy day.... But Reese was still alive, and Finch knew that he shouldn't think about these things. 

But it was like there was a virus in Finch's head altering the hard drive, and he couldn't do anything about it as the images rushed into his head.  
It was after that some neurologists proved themselves of use and analysed the neural activities in Reese's brain. The conclusion that they came to was that Reese was not in a vegetative state, but, rather, was just stuck in a deep dream. The doctors adjusted their glasses and stared at Finch. Finch also stared at them—also through glasses. When glasses met glasses, it looked almost like they were discussing problems that a mainframe might encounter. They said that this mainframe called Reese might have been damaged mentally, and was now hiding in his mind without escape. 

Finch knew this feeling—it was no different than hiding behind lines and lines of code. Compared to stakeouts and carrying binoculars onto rooftops, he much rather preferred staying in front of a computer. It was full of danger there too, but it was better and safer than anywhere else. 

The neurologists couldn't help much afterall—they weren't familiar with dreams and mental trauma, which are the problems psychiatrists should handle in their opinions. But psychiatrists were more powerless still: they couldn't handle a sleeping patient. They only asked Finch what Reese's favourite song was, which they thought would help as they play it near Reese—a desperate attempt in a desperate situation.

Finch stayed by Reese's bed for the whole of the past two weeks.

He didn't even bring a laptop with him; the numbers had been handed off to Detective Fusco. 

And all Finch did everyday was meeting different medical specialists; sometimes there were translators, and sometimes he had to try his best to understand English masked behind heavy accents. But he didn't accomplish anything despite his greatest efforts. 

He almost didn't think about anything. 

For example, before someone brought up the question "why not just change a partner?", Finch hadn't even considered the option. 

The someone in question is Mr. A, a man specializing in dreams. Finch had gone through a lot of time and trouble in order to track him down. He pulled his background, but there wasn't much to be found: his name was Arthur, no family or relatives of any sort, but only a friend named Eames, whose identity was even harder to trace.

Arthur came to the hospital in a three-piece suit, not a single strand of loose hair on his head. He was a smart-looking young man, carrying a black suitcase with him. He sat down beside Reese's bed, connected a tube to Reese's body, which pumped a new kind of drug into his body.

"I'm trying to share his dream," Arthur explained.

And then he fell asleep, and looked like he would sleep forever like Reese lying there. 

He woke up after forty minutes.

"This is the worst scenario," Arthur said, while pulling off the tubes from his and Reese's bodies, "He's stuck inside a repeating dream. He would die in the dream, but he won't wake up, and instead he has to repeat the dream all over again. I'm not sure if it could be describes as Limbo, but it is as bad."

Finch stared at Arthur and asked, "What is Limbo?"

"Limbo is the deepest layer of your subconscious, the deepest dream. If you fell in there, you might never come back. Mr. Finch," Arthur replied. Finch was shocked for a second. He never told Arthur the last name Finch; Harold Wren was the name he gave the young man. 

Arthur caught the look on Finch's face and explained, "I saw your name in the first two layers of Reese's dreams. There are no lies in a dream."

"What is the dream that he is repeating?" Finch asked. He didn't have the leisure to question how the dream specialist acquired his name.

"This is the worst case scenario I was talking about. He constructed a new identity in his dream, a man called Willard Hobbes. Hobbes is the warden of an illegal prison, in which he keeps all the most dangerous and harmful criminals. Hobbes would die at the end of every dream. Reese cannot realise that he is dreaming, so he would not wake up, and instead he has to repeat the dream again. In the two versions of the dream that I just saw, there were both people trying to escape from the prison, each time a different person. The first time was an escape artist and an international criminal. The second was a sniper. At the end of each dream, Hobbes would be killed in a different way. And of course, he would kill others too, such as me when he put a bullet through my eyes."

"I'm sorry about that, Mr. Arthur," Finch said.

Arthur pointed at his head with his finger, "Well, it's not my first time getting shot between my eyes in a dream."

Finch looked at Arthur, then asked, "How would I go about waking him up?"  
"The only way to wake him up is to enter his dream and destroying his most treasured object. Mr. Finch, I'm afraid I have some bad news and good news for you. Bad news number one: he is a strictly-trained secret agent; his projections are all extremely powerful and can kill you with ease. You've got to go up against a whole prison of criminals, not to mention the diabolical guards. Bad news number two: you do not have any dream training whatsoever, and can't fully understand the concept of a totem in a short time, which means that you can't use it to distinguish between dreaming and reality. If you go into another person's dreams, there is a high chance that you would be lost in the dream and stuck in comatose like Mr. Reese."

"And the good news?"

"Well, it isn't much compared to bad news number two," Arthur paused for a second, "Why don't you get a new partner, Mr. Finch?"

Finch stared at Arthur, and the extractor stared back.

He had never thought about getting a new partner before Arthur brought up the question. He started thinking, but not about why he isn't getting a new partner, but about a good way to answer Arthur's question.

Finch was silent for about 5 seconds, long enough to hear the liquids flowing into Reese's body. He glanced at Reese and the tubes on him, then turned and looked right into Arthur's eyes.

"In my previous life, I lost everyone that I ever cared about, and there was no one left standing beside me. I've partnered with Mr. Reese ever after I met him, and right now I only hope that he could stay alive. I would give anything to bring him back. 

Arthur crossed his arms, put his hand to his chin, and smiled, "Then you should hear the good news, Mr. Finch. In the first layer of Mr. Reese's dream, I saw many names. Jessica, Carter, Shaw, Fusco... and you. When I entered the second layer, there was only the endless ocean. I floated on the dark seawater alone, as it surrounded and engulfed me. Planktons sparkled beside me, and the ocean was like the night sky filled with an infinite number of stars. When I closed my eyes, I heard them telling me your name—Harold Finch. The whole ocean was filled with your name. Your name was not substantial; I couldn't see it, but it was voice, and it was information, but most importantly it was a subconscious projection. Your name was scattered densely throughout the ocean like those planktons, they couldn't be found, but they were everywhere. Mr. Finch, you have to understand that dreams can never lie. No matter what it seems like in the real world, no matter how the person describes the relationship, no matter what the others say about it, no matter how the events are documented, understood, and read... There was only one name in the second layer, and it was Harold Finch," Arthur paused, looking at Finch, "I saw my own name in the second layer of my partner's dream, and that's how I knew I wouldn't get hurt even if I fall into his Limbo. Similarly, if you decide to enter this prison called the Tomb, even though each of his projections can kill you with no trouble, no one will do it. The only damage they will do to you will be minor and insubstantial. This is because Mr. Reese is the sole master of this huge dream, and every dreamer will subconsciously protect the name that is hidden in the second layer of their dreams. You are the only safe person in his dreams."  
Arthur turned to look at Reese. With all those tubes plugged into the ex-agent, he looked like a tiny neuron connected within the vast nervous system made up of the tubes. He couldn't move his body right now, but he lived and died in his vast dreamspace. 

Finch turned to look at Reese as well, and he thought of the word "enveloped". The tubes symbolized comatose and death, but they also provided the necessities, for Reese to keep on living. Reese was enveloped in both death and life. Finch decided that it would be hard to determine whether Reese was living or dead if he kept sleeping. A switch only had a zero and a one, but life is so much more than that. Both Reese and him died once, but they were brought back to life again because of each other. 

Which is why he hoped that they would both survive. 

"There is no one besides you that can save him," Arthur said, "don't let yourself drown in the dream. Remember who you are, where you came from, and the reason you came."

"I'll give this a try," Finch replied. This seemed to be the most suitable answer. He didn't know anything about the dream, but he had no other choice besides trying. He asked Arthur, "When do we begin?"

"We can start now if you'd like. My forty minutes sleeping was forty days in the dream. When you enter into a dream, the concept of time is stretched. We cannot determine when Mr. Reese went into the repeating dream as of now, but luckily every cycle of the repeating dream ends with his death. Everything restarts after each circle. If he was dreaming continuously in a single dream, he would've been lost in its depths already."

"Show me the structure of the prison. I'd like to go into the dream soon," Finch said.

Arthur grabbed some paper and a pen and moved his chair beside Finch. He kept his silence as he sketched for a couple of minutes, and revealed a floorplan of the structure. He first pointed to the vast ship on the left, "The dream takes place on a ship: a mobile prison called the Tomb," he tapped on the right side with his pen, "this is the structure of the actual prison. The Tomb is separated vertically overall. Blocks A to D are filled with prisoners, while Block E is empty. The area called Babylon is for eating and breaks. All the guards wear black masks to blur out your perception of their shifts. You enter the dream as a first-day prisoner at the Tomb, and by procedure new prisoners are to report to Warden Hobbes. You must tell him your name. Reese would not remember who you are, but it is very important. It is a key that only belongs to you. The moment you tell him your name, this key will penetrate the dream from the first level through to the level you are on, and it will protect you from harm. The key surrounds the dream while monitoring all the projections, making sure that you will not be killed by anyone besides Hobbes. You are the owner of the name in the second level, so you might even get to wear your three-piece suits in the prison. This is only a guess, so I'm not actually sure."

"How can I make Reese aware of his real identity?"

"You can't tell him straight up from the beginning—this would be pushing too hard. Enforcing this right at the beginning will cause the dream to accelerate its progress, and Reese will be torn apart by riots as a result. Every version of the dream is a separate copy, but you will have to go through all of them, and watching him die horrendously will make you prone to the danger of losing yourself in the dream."

"Will Mr. Reese's mind be affected by his deaths?"

"In a repeating dream, previous deaths will not affect the next iteration of the dream. So if the thugs are onto him and want to torture him to death, the best way out is for you to put a bullet through his heart and end his misery. It may sound hard, but it is the best thing for you to do, Mr. Finch," Arthur said, "Do you know how to use a gun? I can't enter the dream with you. Two people in a repeating dream at the same time will make the dream unstable. You only have yourself in there."

"I can use a gun. Grenades are fine too," Finch answered. Reese had taught him many things, including the usage of a gun, basic self-defence techniques, how to pee into a bottle during a stake-out, how to be a good tailor, and many others.

"Mr. Finch, once you share a dream with someone else, you can never dream another original dream again. You will be a man without dreams."

"I don't need to dream. I'm already living in one," Finch replied.

Arthur chucked, "I know what you mean. My previous job required me to be an excellent programmer as well." He picked up his pen, and continued to scribble onto the paper, "Back to the previous problem of how to wake him up. An untrained person falling into a repeating dream will put his most precious item into a safebox. Your job is to find it and destroy it. The process of this destruction is a release of sorts. As the item gets destroyed, a massive burst of psychic energy is released, which will make the dreamer remember who they are, where they come from, and who the destroyer is. After that the dream you are in will collapse, the ocean from the second layer will flow in, creating a huge tsunami, destroying the prison world. After this layer of the dream is collapsed, you will wake up in the second layer of the dream. By then, you and Mr. Reese can wake up any time you'd like."

"And if I die before I accomplish all of this?"

"As long as you are aware that you are dreaming, your death will cause you to become lucid. A new set of reinforced drugs will be needed to send you back into the dream. Considering your body condition, an excess of these drugs may harm both your body and your mind. So no matter what, please try to stay alive in Mr. Reese's dream. Considering it's you, I doubt it will be hard for you to stay alive," Arthur started to write on the paper yet again, "Mr. Reese's second personality is Warden Hobbes, a paranoid and clean-freak who built a prison to contain prisoners who should disappear. Constructing a prison symbolizes his own need to be contained. He is a warden, someone who locks up others, but he is locked up himself. He seeks penance for what he has done. Hobbes represents the part of his mind that wants to escape and run away, whereas the guards and the prisoners are his dark side, representing killing, ruthlessness, rage, and pain. When these two opposite sides of his personalities are both expressed as sadism, it might mean that he thinks himself as someone who cannot be saved. At the same time, he has put his rationality in the prison as well: His empathy is the physician, and his ability to reason is represented by the escapist. Every one of the projections you'll see in the dream is himself. He thinks himself as guilty, so he always chooses to be killed by his rational self or his ruthless self. And it goes on forever."

Finch suddenly raised his head and looked into Arthur's eyes, "It would seem that you are the intruder into my system, Mr. Arthur. You started to look into Mr.Reese's and my background right after our phone call."

"Thank you for not shutting me out after I hacked into your firewall," Arthur said. He did hesitate to try to cover up anything, "It is best for me to have enough information on my target before entering their dream. I was an extractor, Mr. Finch. When people speak of extractors, they think of lunatics and criminals. I've been wanted by the government and hunted down. It is hard to differentiate between good and evil in this world, and it gets harder when the situation becomes clearer. There is more to this world than our alignments. Both Mr. Reese and I have done things that are categorized as illegal. In my world, the line between dreams and reality is not so prominent than it is for you. I have killed so many people in dreams that I cannot even keep count; I've planted ideas into someone else's head—making the young successor give up his father's company, thousands lost their job and became homeless. I was a criminal, an extractor, but now I am a physician that helps people with their dream problems. Everyone deserves a second chance, and Mr. Reese most certainly do as well." Arthur handed Finch the drawing of the prison, "I want to help people like you—It help me just as much. I cannot dream anymore, and all my penance is dissolved in my long dreamless sleep."

Finch took the paper and raised his head to look at Arthur, "I've been dead once. Lost everybody that I've ever cherished, gave up on a lot of people's lives. And then I found Reese. We started to track down those numbers—no matter if they are victims or perpetrators. Before I met Reese, giving up numbers was like giving up on a life, no different from murder. I deleted the numbers and pretended that there's nothing there, and that was all I did.... This caused me too much until I had nothing left. I only started to feel alive after I met him, because I am able to do something now."

Arthur opened up the briefcase by his feet. Finch spied some round disks, test tubes, and gears.

"Ready to go into the dream, Mr. Finch?" Arthur asked, "I will be here waiting for your return."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finch finds himself inside the Tomb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hohoho! It's Spady, back with another chapter!  
> I was originally gonna post this one and the next one as one huge chapter, but I thought breaking it off here was nice. Plus, I didn't want y'all to wait too long for the next one!  
> This one is a little shorter than the previous, but we are actually getting some action!  
> Enjoy~

Finch felt himself descending. He passed through clouds that were thin as wings of a fly, as small winds pulsed and held on his neck.  
The descend was slow; it felt like the gravity had been lowered to five percent. He tried to relax his body, but the fall just made him want to curl up into a ball. 

He didn't know how long it was before he fell into water. The insurmountable liquid surrounded his body, like silk, weightless. Finch opened his eyes and found himself in the middle of an ocean.  
A blue sun shone in the water as he was surrounded by light and darkness.

The ocean was darkness itself, absorbing all the light coming in contact. The light was the planktons and the invertebrates, jellyfish as big as treetops shining with blue light as they drag over around him. With each movement of their body they swam up, tentacles like hair trailing behind in the water.  
Finch didn't hear his name or see a key. He just slowly and quietly sank deeper and deeper.

He saw butterflies. Butterflies flying in the water.

Those crystal blue butterflies had a wingspan of at least a good one and a half feet wide. They looked like countless suns imprinted in the ocean. They were already dead, and swaying along with the ocean's movements.

Finch closed his eyes. Tiny electric currents flowed through his body.

The seawater embraced his eyes.

 

Suddenly he felt the blindfold on his eyes being taken off.

Finch opened his eyes.

The ocean had disappeared without a trace. He was now sitting in the middle of an enclosed room, with handcuffs on his hands. The blinding light forbid him to open his eyelids.

"Harold Wren."

He heard Reese calling his name. One of the names he used to use.

"I am Warden Willard Hobbes."

As his eyes slowly adapted to the light, Finch raised his head, and saw the man speaking. A Reese who wasn't Reese.

Finch stared at him, and thought of the key.

"Harold Wren is an alias. My name is Harold Finch," He said.

Somewhere invisible from Finch, Reese, and the other projections, the giant Damascus steel key pierced through the three-layered dream like a sword.

 

Finch focused on Hobbes's face. This cold and distant warden looked like a Reese without his night-snacking habit while sporting a shorter haircut. Arthur said he was a clean freak, so Finch started to pay more attention to his suit, tie, and ankles.

Finch hated guessing, but this rule certainly did not apply now. In this prison where Reese kept himself, there is no digital background checks, nothing of the kind of searching that he was used to and good at. The only thing he could do is to observe and make calculated guesses. It was just like bringing binoculars up on a rooftops, spying, and coming up with some sort of conclusion.

Soon, he found out that guessing wasn't so bad at all—the results were fascinating. 

The three-piece suit Warden Hobbes was sporting was clearly the suit that he tailored for Reese; all the details were the same save for the colour difference. The purple checkered tie on Hobbes neck was even more interesting, as it is almost the same one as Finch's one that got brutally savaged by Leila's teeth and saliva, only that the checkers were different sizes.

It was obvious that the suit and the tie certainly left a lasting impression for his partner Mr. John Reese.

"Don’t get smart with me, Finch. Bad idea," Hobbes said, staring at Finch with an indifferent feel.

Finch looked at Hobbes—Thank God that this Reese was able to talk and walk. Finch found his criminal records in Reese's hands. He didn't know what was on it; probably financial crimes or data theft. Hobbes should not have any reason to think that a cripple like him would be able to take on an elite team of agents alone and come out on top. 

Of course, this is only an assumption. He is in a dream. Logic can be twisted and turned in a dream, but for people like Reese, this alteration probably would not be very drastic.  
"Take our self-proclaimed Mr. Finch to his room," Hobbes said, letting Finch go. He didn't even speak to Finch that much—he looked like the kind of person who won't even bother to open his mouth when he didn't need to talk. 

Hobbes stroked his tie, shot a lazy look at Finch, and left. One of the guards at his side strolled over to Finch and grabbed his arm. 

His touch was surprisingly soft, like a volunteer helping kids crossing the road. 

This is Reese's dream, Finch thought. Arthur said before that he was the only person safe in the dream, and the only one who could hurt him was Hobbes.

"Look out for the steps," the young man in a mask said. He walked slowly enough that Finch was not being dragged, but held with comfort. 

This was a strange image. A newly-admitted prisoner in a tidy and clean three-piece suit telling the warden his real name, he was helped to his room by a young, gentle guard in a mask, the guard saying things like "watch the steps" and "if you need help, just tap on the glass". No one even questioned if the prisoner was supposed to be changed into uniform; it was just as if everyone in the prison was wearing three-piece suits.

Finch was brought to a cell in Block C. He looked around—the layout was exactly like the one Arthur drew: a washbasin, a bed, no toilet.

A prison in the eyes of a person who's used to peeing in a bottle on a stakeout didn't apparently include toilets, Finch thought with mild annoyance.

It was good that Arthur had said metabolism was slowed in a dream, then. 

"This is your room, Mr. Finch," the young guard said, "Dinner is in thirty minutes. It will be served in the Babylon block."

"Thank you," Finch said. He saw two other guards on the way here, and they were nowhere as nice as this young man. He had to be careful not to let any weakness slip; he won't be killed by these people, but they certainly will bring him trouble, as even a small attack would most certainly be lethal to him. 

He asked the young man, "What should I call you?"

"I'm not supposed to tell you my name," The man replied.

Finch suddenly felt a familiarity in the man's voice.

"It's alright. Forget the question," Finch said.

The young guard paused for a moment, and answered before closing the door.

"You can call me John, Mr. Finch."

Finch whipped his head up and stared at the guard's back.

The door shut with a snap. 

 

Thirty minutes later, Finch had his first meal inside the prison.

There was no pasta overcooked to a mushy mess, no yucky dough scrambled to make a substitute for bread, no sour meat or mashed vegetables. There was, however, eggs Benedict, Sencha green tea, and colourful doughnuts.

Finch sat down across from a young lad in glasses, picked up his cutlery, and stared at his dinner. 

Reese's prison food was not bad, Finch thought. But eggs Benedict everyday just wasn't very healthy; there should be more options available. He did order eggs Benedict many times, but that didn't mean that he only liked eggs Benedict. 

While he was eating, Finch looked around—these prisoners can all put him down with ease, but no one had picked on him just yet.

Hobbes never appeared again, and Finch couldn't think of a way to see him and to gain his trust just yet.

He had to find Hobbes's treasure in this vast dream world, while preventing any escapes or threats to Hobbes's life. Maybe he could become Hobbes's informer in the prison? But Hobbes didn't seem to be the trusting type; the way that he stroked his tie just screams paranoid all over.

After dinner Finch returned to his transparent cell. He hated being in any kind of room that was transparent. He was used to living a quiet life, undiscovered behind computers and friends. But he couldn't do that anymore. He has to live under these circumstances.

He took off his jacket and waistcoat, and lay down on the small bed.

That was his first day inside the Tomb.

He couldn't imagine what would be waiting for him and Hobbes after this.

 

The light was never turned off during the night; it shone as bring as "day". If the schedule was not set, there wouldn't be such things as day or night inside the Tomb. If Hobbes liked, he could set 23 hours to a day. Every twenty-three days there would be a whole extra day, and day and night would flip in between these multiples of 23. 

The unusually bright light was softened after he shut his eyes, and Finch fell asleep soon after. Just before he started to dream, he heard screams coming from prisoners, but he was too tired to care about anything else.

This is his first dream inside Reese's dream, and it went deeper than any other dream he had had before— It was hidden beneath the three layers of Reese's dream. But it was also much more shallow than the dreams in his normal sleeping—those lights were like black holes sucking his sleep out of him. 

His first dream was as shallow as a small stream that only reached up to the ankles, and he was walking barefeet in the stream. Data flowed all around him. He saw a woman and identified her as Jessica, standing barefeet beside the river. But she was gone in a flash. After that he saw Carter and Fusco. 

This dream was so thin that Finch was able to bring his consciousness in. He thought about the guard who called himself John. Could he be a young Reese? His voice sounded like him, at least. Finch didn't know Reese when he was young, so he hoped that he would be able to talk with this John. But he wore the standard issue mask and black uniform, and disappeared amongst the guards. 

That's when Finch heard a shrieking ringing and opened his eyes.

The lights in Block C was still bright and shining. 

He didn't know if it was night time or day, but it looked like morning. He realized that he won't notice if someone actually took away an hour. 

He sat up on his bed and put his face into his hands. Then he slowly straightened up and walked over to the basin to wash his face. After that he put his glasses back on with a wet hand. 

Right then, most of the prisoners were pacing in front of their bed. The small and completely public glass rooms were like cages trapping insects in, or frames trapping dead butterflies in. 

Finch waited for a half hour, and the guards started to open up the glass doors, escorting the prisoners to Babylon. 

He walked out of the transparent cage and followed the crowd as they slowly made their way through bar code-scanning doors, steel hallways that could only be passed-through in single-file, cramped hallways, and then finally to Babylon. 

Finch collected his breakfast and sat down across from the same glasses-wearing young man as the day before.

"Good morning, Finch," The man said.

"Good morning, Kevin," Finch replied; he had learned the young man's name the day before. Kevin is a white collar criminal: he made a huge fuss in the financial realm. 

"How long have you been here?" Finch asked.

"Two months," replied Kevin, "I'm new here."

"Do you remember how you got here?"

"Nope. It's like my past doesn't exist at all, and I feel like I've only learned about it in a book."

"Do the others feel the same way?"

"Not that I know of."

Finch sipped on his black tea. 

Kevin seemed to be a brand-new and ill-crafted projection. In this case, it was very likely that the dream was 60-days long. So this dream started an hour ago? But he and Arthur did not prepare for such a long time; it was thirty minutes, tops. Did this mean that the deeper Reese fell into the dream, the longer time was stretched out? Finch remembered that Arthur said he was woken up by a bullet through his eyes, courtesy of Hobbes. There was an ongoing riot, and there was no way that Hobbes could've lived for another thirty days. 

The only thing that was sure is that the forty days that Arthur was in the dream, there was at least two riots. Right now, this iteration of the dream had been going on for sixty days, and it could collapse at any time.

"What's Hobbes like?" Finch asked.

Kevin snapped his head up in shock, and stared at Finch with wide eyes. He looked around nervously, and replied in a hushed voice, "We don't talk about Hobbes: he doesn't like other people discussing about him. But I can let you in on some info. What would'ya like to know?"

"Does he have a pet? Or a guard dog; a Belgian Malinois, perhaps?"

"There are no dogs here. He has a different taste in animals."

"Please don't tell me he actually has a bear," Finch inquired. This was a silly question, but he was in a dream, and nothing was impossible. Maybe Reese actually kept a polar bear named Dog in here, fed it fish, and let it out to swim in the ocean at night. It was just hard to picture a three-piece suit-wearing Reese with obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoia to actually walk a polar bear.

"He doesn't keep live animals. I heard he collects butterfly specimens."

"Butterfly specimens?"

"He has loads, all hanged on the walls of his office. Apparently a good portion is blue."

Finch recalled the corpses of the giant blue butterflies in the second layer of the dream. Their scattered scales formed a long and wide ribbon of deep blue. 

"What other hobbies does he have? Yoga, perhaps?" Finch asked. Reese once said that he was going to yoga classes (he might have been joking when he said that, but you never know).

"Yoga??" Kevin looked at Finch, shocked.

Finch found his answer from Kevin's expression, "Never mind that."

Now that he knew parts of this world, Finch was able to piece together some truths about the dream. First of all, this dream realm was not at all as weird as he thought it would be; it actually looked very normal, but Reese's subconscious was buried everywhere. Finch wondered if he could find a Dutch guard called Bear and exchange information with him.

Information was the only thing he really needed.

Finch continued with his breakfast and the cup of black tea that was pretty decent. He peeked at the group of prisoners gathered at the East end of Babylon, and asked, "I thought I heard screams last night; what was that about?"

Kevin whispered, "People die sometimes." He looked at a guard standing far from them, "Guards and the Warden would kill them. Last week a guy called Peter Arndt got killed; four guards ganged up on him and beat him to death. 

Of course Finch remembered the name. He put down the teacup, and asked, "What was this Arndt convicted of?"

"He got into some trouble with his business, got a couple thousands worth of debt. Some suspect he killed his wife. There's always deaths of those prisoners with domestic violence histories by the hands of the guards. They are mostly all in Block D."

Finch took up the teacup again, and sipped on it in silence.

Arthur said that every one of the people here are projections of Reese's own subconscious, but there is no way that Reese could be a perpetrator of domestic violence. Was he projecting the people that he despise, then killing them with his own angry projections?

Finch realised that Reese is making useless remediation in his dream. Killing those people might be making him feel better.

But who was John, then? His young and still hopeful self?

"Is there a guard named John here?" Finch asked.

"No one knows the guards' names. They call each others by numbers, and even those numbers change every day."

Finch raised his gaze, and peeked at the group of prisoners again, "They seemed to be together yesterday as well."

Kevin followed his gaze, but quickly turned his head back, "Don't provoke them, or even get close to them." He spoke hastily in a hushed voice, leaning close to Finch, "Word is that someone is planning a riot to kill the guards and Hobbes. They've been at it for a long time. Nowadays, the situation is very unstable, everyday there's a new fight somewhere, and guards are beginning to harm more people. It's like everyone has gone mad. People who were taken elsewhere never returned. Some died in solitary as well."

The dream is collapsing, Finch thought, Hobbes may very well be killed tomorrow.

He had to talk to Hobbes. He had some things he needed to inquire about.

He knew that he may end up in solitary as a result of this conversation, but he had to try. 

Everyone gets hurt in a prison, he thought.

That's why there are doctors.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finch meets Hobbes for a second time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, apologies for being so late with a half chapter! It's nearing the end of the school year and work has literally been dumped on me. However I assure you that the next chapter will come in a maximum of two weeks! Stay tuned for more Rinch!

Finch got to meet Hobbes twenty minutes after he told a guard that he needed to speak to the warden.

It was before lunch on the second day.

If he knew the weather outside the ship, he would've known that it was actually a sunny day. Reese's repeating dream scarcely had any storms. Sometimes there'd be some low-growls of wind, but most of the time the weather is as calm as the day after a storm. 

On the way to meet Hobbes, Finch was taken by a guard through a corridor he'd never been in before. It was narrow, enclosed, never-ending, and there was a surveillance camera every 30 feet. Finch figured that if he was behind a monitor, he would be able to control the whole situation through these mechanical eyes. But right now, he did not have any bargaining chips in hand; He didn't have enough intel to feed to Hobbes. He had to make every second count, as the dream would collapse at any time.

Hobbes didn't meet him in the interrogation room he's heard from others about. It wasn't an enclosed rat-gray room, but a big office with white walls. There were pipes on the walls, glass display cases on the right side of the door with equipment stuffed inside them, and a table on the left side of the door with beakers and test tubes placed on top. 

This was Hobbes's collection room.

 

Finch saw the blue butterflies right when he was escorted into the collection room by two guards.

The blue butterflies were all dead, like those floating in the ocean on the second layer of the dream. However, these butterflies were all stationary, like a dead contract, a knife that would never be taken out of its wrappings, or a machine that had been kept off for so long that it could not even remember how to run.

Finch caught a whiff of metal on the butterflies, as if they were put together with plastic, minerals, and steels, but he knew that these dead creatures were supposed to be soft and fragile.

What Reese was doing was the reason of these metallic feelings.

The warden was sitting at the table in the middle of the room when Finch walked in. He took of his jacket, leaving his waistcoat, the purple tie with thin plaid patterns was done just right. He was holding a pair of tweezers and a metal needle sort of tool, head down, working on a new taxidermy. He looked as if he was cleaning a gun or studying a complicated wiretapping device. 

The sense of metal flowed in the air, engulfed the room like it did the blue butterflies.

Finch didn't know what kind of butterfly it was, nor did he know why Reese was making them in the dream, hanging them on walls, or treating them like they were exquisite machines. 

Are these the most important things in Reese's dream? Finch wondered.

Before he went into the dream, Arthur had told him that although dreams may not operate in the realm of reality, it is yet another layer of the truth. People usually kept their eccentric selves in their minds, and only letting strange tastes and motives out in dreams. 

The butterflies might mean something else yet; the fragility of life, perhaps.

They were clearly a mystery, just like John.

Finch did a count: there were eleven butterfly specimens on the shelves and on the walls. Three of them were blue, they were put in separate glass display cases, not a single flinch, just like the frozen time in the Tomb and those transparent glass cells. 

Besides those, there was a butterfly specimen on the long table as well. It was a little thing with blueish-purple and black combined colour. Its body was pierced through with a needle and settle on a transparent base, its body looked like it would fly free any time instead of left in a frame like a piece of paper. 

If there was a butterfly that was the most important, this one was.

The guard brought Finch to sit down across from Hobbes on a chair that was not uncomfortable. He reckoned that this was because Hobbes disliked being looked down by the prisoners, not because of the guards' attention to his bad leg. 

Warden Hobbes did not look like he was going to divert his attention from the butterfly; he seemed relaxed, meticulous, obsessive, and deadly, like he was going to remember every single detail while still focusing on whatever was at hand, and nobody could disturb him.

He was a special paradox, just like the dream. 

"What have you got to say?" Hobbes asked, his voice slow and indifferent.

Finch watched him straighten the butterfly's antenna with his tweezers.

"Someone is planning a riot," Finch replied, "I suspect that the threat will come from Block D."

Hobbes paused for a second. He moved his head slightly, took away the tweezers and the needle, and rested his forearms on the table. He let his latex-covered hands rest in midair, reluctantly raised his head from the butterfly specimen, and stared straight at Finch. 

Finch was staring at him too, of course; he looked as calm as Hobbes, sitting across from him in a three-piece suit. 

He pursed his lips and continued to stare at Hobbes. This scene was just like the time when he first found a homeless Reese. Reese didn't know who he was, but he knew everything about him. Reese looked like someone else back then, but Finch made him become the real John Reese all over again.

This time was no different. He found a Reese wandering inside the dream with the name Hobbes; he didn't know who Finch was, but Finch knew who he was. He looked like someone else, but he would become the real John Reese soon enough. 

After Finch had acquired enough leverage to negotiate with him.

Finch's leverage then was identity: he knew everything about Reese's past, even his real surname. Now, his leverage was comprehension: he knew Reese better than anyone. 

It's a shame that the dream wasn't stable enough and Finch couldn't tell Reese directly that he is his subordinate, partner (and lover). It was obvious that no paranoid warden would sit there all day and let Finch tell him about how he and his partner investigated crimes, supported each other (and even kissed and had sex). Hobbes was the one sitting in front of him now: a shipowner, the risk-taker inside the dream, and the version of Reese's identity that he hid deep inside his body, strange as the scales on a blue butterfly's wings. 

"A second day prisoner knowing insight about a riot?" Hobbes stared at Finch indifferently through lowered eyelashes. 

He only observed Finch for 5 seconds this time, then lowered his head again and picked up his tweezers. 

"Or maybe you want a taste of solitary? You'll die faster than anyone else in there."

"I am a security specialist. I can enforce the prison's surveillance and other systems," Finch said.

Hobbes waved Finch's words away with the hand holding the tweezers, "Bring him back," He carefully picked up his metal needle, and started to spread out the wings of the butterfly, "Watch with your eyes, and tell me only when you've picked up actual evidence."

Two guards pulled Finch up by his arms.

The conversation ended abruptly. Finch stared at the blue butterfly inside the glass case—it was less than 20 inches from him. 

He suddenly had the idea of destroying it.

Finch pondered for another second, and again confirmed that this is a great way to grasp the hang of things quickly: If this was in fact Hobbes's most precious, the second layer of the dream will collapse onto this one directly; if it wasn't, Hobbes will have him beat up or send him to solitary, in both cases he would definitely be able to see the doctor and ask him some questions.

Finch took a step forward before the guards pulled him out of the room.

He touched the glass case and flipped it onto the floor with force. 

The clear sound of glass shattering rang throughout the room, destroying the corpse of the blue butterfly with it. 

Broken pieces of the wings and the body lay in a bed of glass shards, like blue minerals breaking under a shovel in a deep mine.

Nothing happened in the dream.

Finch stared at the shards.

If he wanted to see the look on Hobbes's face, he would have to completely turn over. But before he could do that, a guard put a hit to his knee with a baton. 

Finch knelt onto the ground. 

The voice as deep as snow in the dead of night rang behind him.

"Take him to solitary. Now."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some flashbacks, and Finch in solitary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Sorry for the lateness of this chapter (again). School has been busy, but now that summer vacation is here, I promise you there will be more coming!

**Fall 2012**

 

It was midnight when Reese woke up. Finch was still sleeping. 

Moonlight shone into the room through the curtains. 

Finch was tired the night before and forgot to say goodnight. He had gotten used to saying good night after shutting his eyes, and using it to end the day. 

This night, Finch lay flat on the bed, wrapped in warm covers.

Reese was wide awake, legs sticking out from the covers.

They were at least ten centimeters apart from each other.

Reese never touched Finch while he's sleeping, and even kept a distance from him. They were not fighting or suspicious of each other, but Reese had taken to adopt a safe distance, since Finch needed a comfortable and undisturbed sleeping environment. 

They were not youngsters who needed to stick together all the time, but even if they were, Finch's spine would not be suitable for this kind of interactions.

Finch had sustained injuries. He often slept on his back or curled up into fetal position on his left or right. He never slept on his stomach—the head had to be twisted on the side in this position, which did not suit him. 

He would only assume this position for a little while when they made love. He would rest his head on a soft pillow, and Reese would have to plan their sex like he plans their sleeping positions. 

They adapted to each other. 

This moment, when Reese was awake, his hand was about ten centimeters from Finch's. If Finch changed his position and moved closer to him, he would move towards the edge like a reflex. 

The logical explanation is that if they cuddled while they slept, it would potentially put Finch into an uncomfortable position, putting more stress on his spine. 

Luckily Reese had a large bed, and Finch slept proper and gracefully, just like when he was awake. 

The corner of the room was occupied by a dark green rug, with a pot of light-green coloured fern beside it. There was some fresh and moist dirt on the wooden floor beside the rug. 

Reese knocked the plant over yesterday when moving some furniture. He didn't spend much time tidying up, and instead left the dirt on the floor. Finch didn't mind, so he definitely didn't. 

The plant didn't suit him, but it most definitely belonged to him. It told him and anyone that visited (Finch was the only one) that he now had a steady job in New York and came home every night, which was why it hadn't already died beside the carpet. Besides that, its meaning to Reese was the same as a gun, a knife, a blanket, or a drawer. 

Finch woke up as well when Reese turned in bed.

"John?" asked Finch.

"Just happen to wake up," Reese answered. It should've been around 2 AM, which means there was still a lot of time for sleeping. 

"Oh. Goodnight," Finch said, curling up to the other side.

It was obvious that he wasn't able to change Finch's habit of saying goodnight everyday, even if it was already the next day.  
Reese edged towards that side and faced the same way as Finch, lying on his side behind Finch.

The distance between his chin and Finch's neck was less than five centimeters.

"Goodnight, Finch."

~

**Fall 2013**

**Third Layer of the Dream**

 

Arthur mentioned a lot of things, but he certainly did not mention that solitary was literally like an oven. If he had known, Finch definitely would not have smashed the glass case from the start. He seemed like a professional fight-starter: requesting a meeting with the warden on his second day, and smashed the other man's precious plaything without any good intentions.  
There wasn't any reason why Hobbes wouldn't be angry. 

In fact, the dream specialist named Arthur definitely knew that a software engineer like Finch who didn't have any knowledge about dream extractions had a high chance to mess up Reese's dream. But Mr. Arthur Nice-Guy did not comment on it at all, or even issued any warning. 

"Do whatever you want to do. It's a dream, and you are the only safe person," he urged like so. 

He saw many things inside Reese's dream, knew about their relationship. In the world of a repeating dream, letting the lover of the fallen one mess up the dream and picking them out was the best solution.

Which is probably why Arthur didn't list anything that he couldn't do. "You can probably just smash his collection, and see what happens." He even encouraged Finch to wreck havoc in Reese's dream.

Arthur himself, however, was unable to do the same. Even though he was a dream expert, if he wasn't careful, he would have been shot and killed dozens of times by Hobbes and his incredibly strong projections. 

But Finch could.

 

Finch's day had been horrible. 

He previously thought that solitary meant a small, isolated room—the more dangerous prisoners gets locked in there, food and water still supplied. But when he gets thrown into the room by two guards and the scorching lights come one, he immediately knew that he'd made a very wrong choice.

Reese could get anyone to talk within sixteen hours; he had the talent for this kind of things, and solitary would no doubt be different than any other. 

It would be a bad idea to keep his three-piece suit in here, so Finch took off his jacket and vest, and curled up into the smallest space possibly, facing away from the light. He thought back to when he slept together with Reese; he would rest in a comfortable position, and wake up in the same comfortable position he was in before.

The memories intertwined with the heat, and he felt the moisture seeping out from his body.

His body, clothes, socks and hair were soaked with sweat, as it dripped from his forehead onto the steel floor. His eyesight began to blur. It felt like he had been submerged into a tub of overheated water. 

The lights still shone on him; he felt like a lab rat trapped in a cage.

Finch felt pain. The agony spread from his throat down through his whole respiratory system (including his lungs), and he worried that blisters might be forming somewhere. The pain radiates to his skin and spine immediately after as he wimpered on the floor. 

The heat squeezed his body trying to get rid of all the water, making him a puddle on the ground, unable to move.

His trachea was bleeding, throat filled with a constant, sharp metal tang. The taste kept growing until it filled the inner walls of his trachea. 

His sweat had the taste of blood. 

It felt like a prolonged, endless explosion, and all his awful memories were refreshed in the heat and pain. He couldn't help but relive his whole life: the people he couldn't save, the discarded numbers... 

The burning light was a barbed claw, scraping at his back. 

He was delirious from dehydration. He banged on the walls. 

At the end, there was no more sweat to be spend, as he lay there, exhausted to the last breath.

Time stretched to impossible lengths, like trying to find the way out of a desert on foot. 

When everything was finished, he heard the sound of the light being turned off, but he wasn't able to move. He lay there like a corpse. He would rather just stay there if no one was going to move him. He wasn't sure if he had any burn wounds; his fist was bloodied as it lay against the wall—from when he was in agony, banging against the wall.

Finch lay the back of his hand against the wall, blood rubbing onto the paint. Normally he wouldn't feel a thing in his dreams—Reese usually kept at least ten centimeters between them, five if he was on his side. But they had the habit of saying good mornings and good nights every day. 

The door of the solitary room was opened, and someone scooted down before him—the doctor in Reese's dream.

"He needs an IV."

Someone else stooped over him after, carrying him on his shoulders.

"You'll be alright, Mr. Finch."

The voice belonged to John, his touch still light and gentle.

A fair bargain, Finch thought. He closed his eyes and let his glasses hang loose on his nose, as he rested his head onto John's shoulder. He was far from death in the dream, only dehydrated, but it was enough to confirm that the blue butterfly wasn't the key to the dream. Plus, he was able to reach the doctor and John.

Now came the time for questions. 

For example, if they had a little polar bear called Dog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> For updates or just general multifandom goodness, check out my tumblr at daredeviledeggsy.tumblr.com!


End file.
